Almost everything you need to know about the importance of characters in of mice and men can be determined through the way they look and what people say about them.

I will talk about one of the main characters, Lennie.
Lennie is described in the book as ‘large’ and ‘simple minded’ man, in the book, it is evident that Lennie ha some sort of mental deficiency, this idea is also reinforced in an early part of the book, where Lennie’s friend and carer: George talks to him:
“If he finds out what a crazy bastard you are, we won’t get no job”. George is certain that if the ranch owner that they are trying to get employment from finds out that Lennie is mentally retarded, they will be discriminated against and will not get hired.

Another character whose importance can be shown by the way they look and what people say about them is Curley.

Curley is described by numerous ranch workers as ‘handy’ and ‘aggressive’ by some of the ranch workers, this is because he is a boxer, but he also is quite short, which could mean that he has Napoleon’s syndrome, which is were people with a smaller stature want to seem powerful by being aggressive.

However, how characters look and people say about them is not enough to determine their importance, there are other factors like what the characters say themselves and how they behave, for example, in many occasions, Lennie will always talk about ‘tending the rabbits’ which is his dream job when him and George are finally successful, which shows how simple Lennie really is.